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- Washington same-sex couples line up to register as domestic partners
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Washington same-sex couples line up to register as domestic partners
Couples still hope for full marriage equality rights
Published Thursday, 02-Aug-2007 in issue 1023
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – Cheers and smiles abounded Monday as same-sex couples registered for domestic partnerships, a new label that grants same-sex pairs some of the rights enjoyed by straight spouses.
But many in the crowd had another message: the fight won’t be over until they hear wedding bells.
“It’s a significant first step. But it’s only a first step,” said state Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, Washington’s senior gay lawmaker.
Couples lined up by the dozens Monday – some before dawn – to be among the first to register as domestic partners when the secretary of state’s offices opened for business at 8 a.m.
Under gray summer skies that threatened to rain, a crowd of 100 or more counted down “Five, four, three, two, one!” and sent up a cheer as the doors opened and the first few couples filed inside.
A new law passed by the 2007 Washington Legislature gives registered domestic partners about two dozen rights, including hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations and inheritance rights when there is no will.
But they aren’t getting all the rights that traditionally married couples have, and the registry is not the same as civil unions offered to same-sex couples in other states.
The first couple in line Monday morning – 30-year partners Jim Malatak, 64, and Rick Sturgill, 53, of Seattle – shared a kiss as a state clerk handed over a pair of domestic partnership certificates.
“Wonderful. Supremely wonderful,” Malatak said afterward. “I hope this can be the model for young gays coming up.”
No protesters were seen Monday morning, but some evangelical conservatives voiced their displeasure with the new unions.
Joseph Fuiten, a Bothell pastor who leads the conservative group Positive Christian Agenda, called the partnership registry “social experimentation.”
“The state of Washington is signaling to our children that domestic partnerships are nearly as good as marriage,” Fuiten said in a statement. “No research was done by the Legislature to prove that no harm will come to society as a result of this action.”
To be registered under the new state law, couples must share a home, not be married or in a domestic relationship with someone else, and be at least 18.
In a provision similar to California law, unmarried, heterosexual, senior couples are also eligible for domestic partnerships if one partner is at least 62. Lawmakers said that provision was included to help seniors who are at risk of losing pension rights and Social Security benefits if they remarry.
The new law takes effect about a year after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that state lawmakers were justified in passing the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.
Some 85 couples were registered after the first hour Monday, with another 50 pairs standing in a line that wrapped around the front of the secretary of state’s office in downtown Olympia.
Sympathetic drivers offered honks and gave thumbs-up to the couples, some of whom brought their children for the event.
Rachel and Sandy Mosel, of Federal Way, brought two of their four kids – Laura, 7, and Kyle, 9 – who played on a small patch of grass while the adults waited in line.
The kids have been to Olympia before, when the family came to lobby in favor of a state law that extended civil rights protections to gays and lesbians.
“It can feel like a really anti-gay world out there when you’re a kid,” Rachel Mosel said. “I think it’s really important to bring our kids along for the positives.”
Murray, the leading sponsor of the domestic partnership bill, was among those getting registered Monday.
But Murray said he and his partner of 16 years, Michael Shiosaki, were heading back to work after filing their partnership papers. The real celebration will come later, he said.
“The day we take a day off, the day that we have a party, the day that we go on a real honeymoon will be the day that we can legally marry in this state,” Murray said. “And that day is not today.”
One Tacoma couple used their wardrobe to express their split feelings about the partnership registry.
Both women wore black leather pants, with Amanda Swarr donning the top and veil of a white wedding dress. Her partner, T Steele, wore a matching black vest, with the skirt from the wedding dress tucked into the back of her waistband.
As she waited in line, Swarr held a homemade sign: “When we get the rest of our rights, we’ll wear the rest of the dress.”
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